Would walking hand-in-hand increase the traffic efficiency of children pedestrian flow?

Children group are particularly vulnerable when exposed to a crowd as their cognitive ability and mobility are largely undeveloped, especially for pre-school children. Studies specifically designed to understand the movement dynamics of children pedestrians are scarce and their walking behaviors are less investigated and understood in the literature. As for the pre-school children, holding another child's hand is usually a recommended pattern by their teachers when walking along a street or crossing a street for the sake of safety. In this study, we aim to investigate whether it also has a positive effect on children traffic efficiency. To achieve this goal, a series of controlled experiments were conducted with 80 pre-school children aged 4∼5 years old, in which they were required to walk normally and walk hand-in-hand. Two typical flow scenarios in a corridor, namely, the unidirectional flow and the bidirectional flow were considered. It was found that the traffic efficiency of children flow was reduced with the walking hand-in-hand pattern both in the unidirectional flow and the bidirectional flow. In addition, the typical characteristics of children walking hand-in-hand was investigated. It is expected that the datasets and findings from this study will be valuable resources to the researchers and pre-school educators to understand children walking behaviors and develop related educational programs to enhance traffic efficiency of children flow while maintaining safety during collective movement.